It's nice that we have heart to keep coming back and showing pride this season - something that was non-existant last season.

BUT we need to start doing it for 48 minutes.

This thing with coming out lethargic and listless, giving up 60+ in a half and spotting teams 20 point leads has to come to an end and soon. Playing comeback ball all the time isn't a recipe for success. What is (IMHO) is setting the tone from the beginning of the game and forcing them to play OUR game instead of the opposite. ESPECIALLY THE BAD TEAMS.

That's another reason why Zeke is too much of the Phil Jackson mode in that he's a much better motivator than he is an X's and O's guy - the team in the early goings often don't look prepared and they fall into these quickie deficits. By all rights, we should've blown the Cats out of the water and we surrendered 60+ to one of the worst scoring teams in the league while they were running the same plays over and over and over again.

We also have to recognize that defense is by far our best offense - as evidenced tonight in our regular comeback.

Just my take. We win more often when the point-spotting stops.

good post........ its insaine how slow we start games and there is no lineup change to fix it its simply a mentality and Isiah needs to get on the team early they need inspiration early in the game its totally mental

YUP I AGREE I ALWAYS GET TIRED seeing this team fall behind

I think this team is "afraid" to fall behind and they put thier initial effort more into the offense, or trying to get it going. Look at the amount of points we often give up early in games. We sure aren't coming out focussing on the D. But, when they fall behind they get crafty with thier D and the O follows. I need to be able to see more games to say though. I would venture to say that it's very very psychological. The whole "playing at home" is still tough for them, but they are playing much much better at home.

I'm bumping this thread up since tonight's game applies too.

We just don't look very motivated against the bad teams. I don't care how tired we were - this is just no good against the worst team in the league.

Posted by Rich:

They played a lot of quarters of basketball this week. I hate that the lost to a bad team, but I can deal with it.

We played the worst team in the league. There are zero excuses. Isiah did a miserable job -- how Lee didn't play 40 mins is beyond me -- he was the only guy out there who cared and he did an incredible job on Iggy when he was guarding him. The fact that Jerome James was our 6th man tonight is ridiculous. Screw Isiah, he'll be bringing David Lee off the bench again when Jefferies returns. These guys are basketball players, they get 3 days off, they can afford another 40 mpg night. Awful in every aspect except David Lee.

When you take bad shots which leads to fast breaks which results in points for your opponent, that's the makings of early first quarter holes. In the first quarter alone Crawford to took about 5 really bad shot which led to about 8 - 10 point. He is such a dumbass taking shot when there aren't Knick under the boards going for the rebounds. It's just plain ****ing stupid to do that, I even saw Webber steal the ball from his ass. What a ****ing *******.